A lesson about Inventions (Part 1)

Lesson outline

In this lesson, I wanted students to use technology and to combine this with the speaking element of the class. I began, as usual, by reviewing the previous lesson and asked some students to choose numbers from the bingo grid (see previous post) and to present their traditional Korean object to the rest of the class.

I then introduced the theme of the class, which was 'Inventions' and proceeded to ask them if they had ever invented anything - to which some of them answered "Yes". I then pursued this further by asking them to draw and explain their past inventions on the board. After this initial chit-chat, I moved on to explain the main part of this two-part lesson.

The main concept, was to get the students to think of an object from their home, such as a chair and then to think of a random object, such as CDs - they would then have to loosely relate or combine these two elements in their invention design (An example of which is given above).

Students were shown two further examples, one of which, was by a Korean inventor (See above photos). They were then placed into pairs and assigned random words (objects) and given the blank template worksheet to start thinking about their invention designs. Students were also informed that they had to be able to answer a set of questions about their invention in the speaking element of the lesson, which was to be next week (see below).

A lesson about Traditional Korean Objects

Lesson outline

This lesson started with a review of the previous lesson, whereby, I again asked students to explain different aspects of their national flag to me.

We then showed the students the following 'title' and 'example' slides:

My co-teacher had brought in an example of a traditional Korean object from home (밥상보) and proceeded to model her explanation of it based on the questions provided in the 'example' slide. This was followed by students, randomly choosing similar slips of paper to the 'example' slide and therefore being assigned to research about a particular traditional Korean object. They were then given 15 minutes and were allowed to use the computers in the English classroom and the second floor of the building to complete their research (My co-teacher and I split them into two groups and accompanied them). Students then regathered in the English classroom and had to introduce their object to their partner.

In order to review the lesson, I had prepared a kind of bingo grid of all 19 traditional objects (hidden behind screens) and numbers were chosen by the students and consequently, a student would then have to come to the front and explain their object to the whole class.

That's all for now folks!

A lesson about The Korean National Flag

Lesson outline

This lesson coincided with South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na claiming the women’s title at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships in Canada. We began our class by asking the students if they had watched her performance and the subsequent medal ceremony - to which nearly all answered "No". We therefore took the opportunity to find a YouTube clip of both her performance and the following medal ceremony where a Canadian choir sang the Korean national anthem. Watching her amazing performance, seeing her on the podium, and hearing their national anthem all helped to stir the students’ national pride. We then showed them a photograph of Kim Yu-na, taken shortly after her performance, capturing her with the national flag wrapped around her shoulders (see photo) – this was a perfect inroad to our lesson topic.

To follow on from the introduction of the lesson topic, we gave the students a quick quiz on national flags of countries that had participated in the 2012 Olympic Games.

 

A picture of the British National flag then followed this and students were encouraged to ask questions about it – to which I, the English native speaker from England, had to do my best to answer.

Upon answering their questions, it was then my turn to ask them about their flag. This was an important stage of the lesson, as it proved to highlight some of the difficulties students had in trying to explain their national flag to a foreigner:

(i) A lack of vocabulary

(ii) Difficulty in describing specific locations of things on the flag

(iii) Difficulty in translating accurately from Korean to English

(iv) Confusion over what some of the symbols stood for

We then showed them the following slide of a conversation between two people discussing the Korean national flag. Students were told to prepare answers for Mi Hyeon based on the previous q&a session with myself. Students then had an opportunity to practise the dialogue in pairs and finally, some were chosen to come to the front of the class and act out the dialogue with myself playing the role of 'Steve' and they as 'Mi Hyeon'.

I also went to the trouble of decorating the English classroom accordingly for our lesson:

That's all for now folks!

A lesson about A memorable moment in your life

Introduction

March 2013 marked the start of a new academic school year and this post is about my second lesson with my students. My co-teacher this year is Mrs Kang and we are teaching second grade students who are preparing to enter universities across South Korea. Our English classes this year have to include both a speaking and writing element but since they are having a class with a native English speaker, they will predominantly focus on speaking.

Lesson outline

The students spent the first three days of the week at an elderly care home as part of their annual voluntary service programme. Prior to this, we had asked the students to bring a photograph of a memorable moment in their lives to their next class. The main goal of the lesson was to focus on the usage of the past tense and the time spent at the elderly care home provided us with a good opportunity to make the students recall accounts of their time there.

1. We began the lesson with a simple Q&A session about their time at the elderly care home.

2. Students were then asked to explain their photographs to their partner (pair work) and the listener had to ask at least two follow-up questions in the correct tense.

3. Students rotated partners and continued to talk about their pictures. We walked around listening to the students and correcting any incorrect usages of tense.

4.  One or two students were then chosen to come to the front of the class with their photograph. The rest of the students then had to ask questions, using the correct tense, in order to find out more about the photograph in question. We would monitor their questions and correct them where necessary - every time!

5. Finally, students were presented on-screen with an account of my memorable moment. In my description, I had blanked out words which were written in the past tense and asked the students to shout out the correct answers as I read it aloud to them. This was then to serve as a good visual tool for their writing task which was soon to follow.

6. Writing task: Students were given the task of writing about their photograph using the past tense. Students were to highlight any usages of the past tense in order to make the marking of their work easier.

That's all for now folks!

A lesson about Christmas

Lesson outline

This year, my co-teacher (Miss Lee) and I decided to put our guitar skills to some use and play a song with the students. We decided to play "The twelve days of Christmas" because of its simple melody and repetitive nature - making it easy for the students to follow.

We divided the class into two groups, whereby the first group would sing the odd numbered days (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11) and the other the even numbered days (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) - this way all students would be involved and it added a touch of spice to the song.

 

Before playing the song with the students, we began our lesson with a speaking task. It was a spot the difference puzzle based on a Christmas theme. Students worked in pairs and had to communicate with each other in English to find the differences between their pictures. This worked well and students enjoyed the activity. We then summarized at the end, with the whole class working together, to point out the differences that they had found.

Finally, to end the lesson, we introduced our New Year's Resolutions to the class. We then asked the students to guess which resolutions belonged to which teacher. It was then the students turn to make up at least three resolutions of their own and to write them on some decorative shapes, which were then used to make a beautifully decorated Christmas display outside of our English classroom.
 

A speaking game

Lesson outline

In this lesson, students played a variation of a classic British TV game show called "Call my Bluff". The original game show used obscure words but for this lesson, I wanted the students to describe pictures and to talk about themselves.

Procedure

I divided the class into teams of three.

Each team then chose its team name.

A team was chosen and asked to sit at the front of the class, where three desks were placed. On each desk was an envelope. Two of the envelopes contained pictures, while the third contained only a blank piece of A4 paper. Students were then given thirty seconds to prepare themselves and think how they were going to describe their picture. After thirty seconds, each student took turns to describe their picture - the one with the blank piece of A4 paper having to make up a description of their own.

Upon listening to all three descriptions, the remaining teams then had to guess who was bluffing. If the person bluffing was identified correctly, then two points were awarded to that team. For each team that failed to identify the bluffer, the team describing was awarded one point. The game continued in this fashion until all teams had participated.

I had planned to do a second round, whereby each team member would think up two truths and a lie and then present to the audience. The audience would have to identify the lie in each case and points would be awarded accordingly. However, the one-hour lesson was taken up by just the picture round and they did not have time to do the second one.

The lesson began with three demonstration videos of the English teachers explaining pictures in order to instil some interest and to rouse their curiosity.